This invention relates to advertising placards for use in aircraft and, more particularly, to self adhesive advertising placards meeting FAA requirements for use in commercial aircraft passenger cabins.
In the United States alone, millions of people travel on thousands of commercial aircraft every year. These people travel for various reasons including vacations and business. They travel in different classes such as first class, business, and coach, but they all have several things in common. When they board an aircraft, they walk past blank overhead luggage compartments doors. As they ride in aircraft, they look up at blank overhead luggage compartment doors, and while moving around aircraft cabins during flight, they are guided past blank overhead luggage compartment doors. To utilize these literally thousands of blank surfaces, the present invention proposes placing advertising placards on outer surfaces of overhead luggage compartment doors in aircraft passenger cabins.
To protect the prominence of aircraft safety markings and emergency lighting, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that items used in commercial aircraft comply with a Conformity Code. To that end, the overhead luggage compartment doors and other internal surfaces of aircraft passenger cabins are typically colored beige, gray, or off-white. These neutral colors serve to highlight safety markings and exit/emergency lighting in aircraft passenger cabins. Thus, any advertising placard must not appreciably distract passenger from the prominence of safety markings and emergency lighting before the FAA will approve it for use in aircraft passenger cabins.
Advertising placards placed in passenger aircraft cabins should also be unobtrusive because the passengers will view them, in many cases, for several hours depending on the length of the flight. An obtrusive advertising placard could overwhelm and have an undesirable impact on the passengers. Further, because there are thousands of overhead luggage compartment doors in operation, advertising placards used on these doors should be relatively easy to put in place, and because specific advertisers frequently change, advertising placards should be relatively easy to remove without damaging the doors.
Additional FAA requirements and tests must also be passed before an advertising placard may be used in aircraft passenger cabins. In the vertical burn test of 14 C.F.R. .sctn. 25.853, Appendix F(b)(4) for example, an advertising placard is applied to an overhead luggage compartment door, or to another specific component to which the placard is to be applied, and the door and placard are exposed to fire. Specifically, the door and placard are orientated vertically 3/4 inch above a burner with a 11/2 inch flame. The flame is maintained for sixty seconds. Once the flame is removed, the sample must not continue burning for more than fifteen seconds, and the burn length must not exceed six inches on average. The test is performed on a minimum of three samples.
Thus, placing advertising placards on the thousands of overhead luggage compartment doors is desirable to reach millions of people with advertisements. It is also desirable to provide an unobtrusive advertising placard to obtain FAA approval and avoid overwhelming passengers. It is further desirable to provide an advertising placard that is relatively easy to put in place and remove without damaging the surface to which it is applied.